This time instead of trying SCIM or Ibus I just went for FCITX. After the initial install of Debian 8 Jessie’s fcitx-sunpinyin package, I had to do only a couple of command line statements, and it configured properly. This gave me a crude but working simplified Chinese input and display. Though it looks out of place with the slickness of Enlightenment E17, I am fine with it.
Here is some general info from debian fcitx and from fcitx.org, Configure and
Config Input Mode. Here are some FCITX instructions from Arch
Steps:
- command line: apt-get install fcitx-sunpinyin
- You could also do FCITX GooglePinyin. I did not.
- im config: Tell Debian to use fcitx as the input system. command line: im-config
- Restart x11 with the new input system: command line: startx
- FCITX Config Tool: This configures your fcitx. Add SunPinyin as an input system, change SunPinyin options. I did not change any input options as I don’t really understand the options. You can also find these in E17 under “Settings”, far right setting under “languages”. command line: fcitx-configtool
To test open a browser or a text editor, go to an input area, hit cntrl-space and you should see “SunPinyin” appear. Then type some pinyin and the character options should appear. I can only see 5 options with an arrow for more. There is no setting to make this more or less. Toggle cntrl-space back to English.
Alternate input methods Ibus:
ibus Chinese
ibus SunPinyin
ibus debian Japanese
Overall it seemed pretty easy, once you knew how. Note that SUnPinyin did add about 230mb to the install, but at least I can type Chinese!
